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'The Spiderwick Chronicles': Ogres and Boggarts and Brownies, Oh My!

By Daniel Montgomery

Thursday, February 14, 2008

The first thing I noticed about ‘The Spiderwick Chronicles’ was how strong the cast is. They’ve assembled actors, I think, who are better than the material requires, though far be it from me to suggest the hiring of lesser talents to meet only the most basic needs of the characters. First up is David Strathairn as the title scientist. In the prologue he has no dialogue, and when they introduce the erstwhile Edward R. Murrow to have him not say anything, you know they’ve stacked the deck. Next is Mary-Louise Parker as the obligatory clueless parent: weird things happen all around her, but she doesn’t believe in magic. I’d call it a thankless role, but Parker is an actress who inspires gratitude; she is incapable of delivering a line without the spark of intelligence. Later, Nick Nolte and Joan Plowright, and giving voice-over performances are Martin Short and Seth Rogen. Who knows, maybe also Meryl Streep in an uncredited cameo as a fire hydrant—I thought that fire hydrant looked familiar.

Even the young stars are top-shelf talent, with resumes most adults would envy. Freddie Highmore, playing young hero Jared and his twin brother Simon, has made ‘Finding Neverland’ and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. His big sister is played by Sarah Bolger, one of the stars of ‘In America’. We meet them and their mother as they drive up to Great Uncle Spiderwick’s gothic manse in middle of the night. That’s the second thing I noticed: Who moves into a new house in the dead of night, least of all one that a location scout might select for ‘The Amityville Horror’?

The house isn’t haunted, per se, but it’s the home of a strange creature named Thimbletack (Short), who is larger than a thimble or a tack, but never mind. Thimbletack is invisible unless he wants you to see him. He is prone to fits of rage, during which he bulges into a hyperactive green menace, like the Hulk in miniature. For eighty years, he has been the guardian of “Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastic World Around You,” a compendium containing all of Spiderwick’s research about invisible creatures like Thimbletack. There are malevolent creatures also, in the woods surrounding the house, and if they get their hands on the book, we’re told, the world ends. That’s the third thing I noticed: In just a few years of studying the magical creatures on his doorstep, did Spiderwick somehow come across the Doomsday Device? Under different circumstances, I might dismiss the book as a MacGuffin, but it doesn’t simply serve to drive the story. It’s also the exposition, and in that role it doesn’t exposit enough. We want to know why the book is so sought after and what makes it so dangerous.

That is not to say the book is short on information. Just the opposite, it supplies too much. There are goblins, hobgoblins, brownies, boggarts, and ogres. There are floating dandelion seeds who suspend time. There are spells and charms and protective barriers and an incantation spoken in native tree-elf. At this point, we’ve never met a tree elf, but we know what we’d say to one if the opportunity presented itself. All this is minutiae, and the screenplay gets caught up in it like it’s preparing us for a dark-arts final exam. The best magic in the movies is simple and lets the characters shine. Consider the delightful Hogsqueal (Rogen), who looks like a hog and kind of squeals, so that fits. Hogsqueal is a friendly hobgoblin, and the details of his existence are wonderfully bizarre. He has a ravenous appetite for birds, and he is able to give a human the ability to see the hidden magic world by spitting in his face. I think Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black, authors of the film’s source novel, must have had a ball coming up with that.

In this breezy 90-minute concoction, the screenplay also finds room for a drama about the parents’ divorce. Jared, the more rebellious twin, resents his mother for the split, but it’s not as simple as he believes. Most of this material works, because the actors bring such conviction to it, and this is where lesser performers might have sunk the story. Parker is an actress of sparkling wit but also deep emotional reserves, and she makes the underdeveloped mother into a character we care about. With the same actors and sets, they could have made a movie about the divorce, without the magic, and it would be worth seeing.

Still, the two halves of the story make for an awkward fit, especially during a scene where Jared turns the tables on an impostor. I’ll refrain from going into detail, lest I reveal too much of the plot, but thank goodness Jared is right. Had he been wrong, this would quickly have become an R-rated drama about a homicide.

The story retreats from character and relies too heavily on violent action and effects in the end. I wish, for instance, that the mother had been given a chance to react to magic before being thrust into a cataclysm against the forces of evil. In her day job, Parker plays a drug-dealing soccer mom on the television series Weeds and manages to make it both funny and credible. What I wouldn’t give for just one scene that allows her voice-of-reason character to come to terms with goblins attacking her house—the funniest scene in the movie, and it isn’t even in the movie.

‘The Spiderwick Chronicles’ is directed by Mark Waters, who has made two above-par teen comedies—‘Freaky Friday’ and ‘Mean Girls’—and now proves adept in working with digital effects in fantasy. The screenwriting credits are impressive. Of its three writers, Karey Kirkpatrick was a co-writer of the sublime ‘Chicken Run’ David Berenbaum wrote the well-received hit ‘Elf’, and John Sayles, is, well, John Sayles—a two time Academy Award-nominee and the accomplished writer-director of films like ‘Lone Star’ and ‘Sunshine State’. What their collaborative effort lacks in proper focus, it makes up for in smart characters allowed to speak intelligent dialogue. I’m partial to the shy twin Simon, who says things like “I don’t do conflict” without the smug precociousness that often afflicts young actors. (As a side note, Highmore is to be commended for accomplishing the harder-than-it-looks task of differentiating dual roles without exaggerating or calling attention to himself.) With such talent at its disposal, ‘The Spiderwick Chronicles’ succeeds as a charming diversion, though that same talent reminds us that it might have been more than that.